Dear Pre-1(PFAE) Parents and Families,
It is already February and we are flying through this semester! We are thankful that even through remote learning our classroom has managed to stay connected! We know the challenges that remote learning brings. We want to thank each of you for joining us during our team calls, emailing, and staying connected during this time! The children are excited to be back to in-person learning and we are too!
As we have returned to in-person learning the children are remembering our daily schedule. We are getting back into our classroom routine as well as our daily interactions with all of our peers. We have introduced our “How full is your bucket” bulletin board to go along with the book “How full is your bucket?” by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath. The book teaches a valuable “bucket filling” metaphor. The story comes to life by describing that each person has a bucket. Each day the bucket can be filled with positivity as you fill your bucket with green choices. You can also be a bucket dipper as you demonstrate red choices or negative ones that may deplete your buckets or the buckets of people around you. We have created our classroom bucket that we are working to fill weekly with colored pom-poms. We have emphasized the importance that our class bucket is a team effort and that we need to work together to fill it. The children have been working towards filling our bucket to earn a slime party as their choice. Overall, the story as well as the visual bucket has been a positive guidance technique that has been successful in our classroom! We recently decorated individual buckets for each child and will soon add them to our classroom routine. Each child received a white metal bucket as well as letter and shape stickers to decorate their school bucket. Soon we will enhance our bucket filling guidance by allowing each child to fill their bucket daily and at the end of each day, they will add their pom-poms to our classroom bucket. This will individualize this experience for each child as they feel they did their part to help fill our classroom bucket! We will keep you posted on how it turns out!
Read-Alouds
For our recent read-aloud stories this month we focused on our book “Actual Size”. This book was also given to each of you to connect learning at school with learning at home along with some activities to do at home. The children enjoyed learning about animal facts from the book. They showed an interest in rulers, and tape measures as we measured the actual size of animal parts found in our book. The rulers and tape measures were used in various areas in our classroom too. We measured furniture, toys and even each other! Another book that focused on the size that we read was “Goldilocks and the three bears”. Some children enjoyed reenacting this story out in our dramatic play area. Other books highlighted this month were “Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom” and “Buildings from A-Z”. These books focused on some letter recognition as we enjoyed listening to each on our i-pad. The children loved the upbeat song that went along with “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”. We recalled letters found in our names in both stories.
Small Groups
Our small groups this month have focused on the book “Actual Size”. We spent time comparing our hands to a gorilla hand as the children paired up and traced each other’s hands and measured them on paper. We also compared our feet to elephant feet and traced and measured our own feet on paper with a friend. We had a lot of conversations with new vocabulary words that we learned in the “Actual Size” book. We added visuals as well as the text to these new vocabulary words on our classroom word wall.
We spent a lot of time inside this month as the temperature was too cold to go outside. Every day we organized an hour of indoor large motor activity. Physical activity is important for young children as they are developing new skills such as coordination, balance, travel skills, and gross motor manipulative skills. During our large motor hour, we divided the classroom into three groups and rotated large motor stations inside. We got creative as we moved furniture to ensure enough space was provided. We created obstacle courses, a small bike path, and a bean bag toss. We also enjoyed our parachute, body roller as well as numerous stretching sessions and dance parties. The children enjoyed these activities but we are excited to get outside as the weather warms up soon! Reminder to still bring winter gear as we still have snow on the ground and we will be spending time outside.
We look forward to a great rest of the semester filled with learning and development for your child.
As always please reach out with any questions you might have.
Jen, Sarah, and Abby
